After weeks of grandstanding and chaos, President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” has now passed both chambers of Congress.
Trump has dubbed it his crown jewel. But for working families, it’s a dagger: a Frankenstein bill packed with tax breaks for the rich, deep cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, and a scorched-earth energy agenda.
“This is a big, ugly, obscene betrayal of American working families that was rammed through the Senate in the dead of night to satisfy a president determined to hand tax cuts to his billionaire friends,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten. “These are tax cuts paid for by ravaging the future: kicking millions off healthcare, closing rural hospitals, taking food from children, stunting job growth, hurting the climate, defunding schools and ballooning the debt.
The House version, passed on May 22, reads like a right-wing, extremist fever dream making permanent the tax cuts from Trump’s first term (including deductions for tips and overtime), implementing a $1,000 “Trump Account” for newborns, expanding child tax credits, and suping up the military budget with a proposed “Golden Dome” missile shield. The bill slashes federal oversight, fast-tracks fossil fuel production, and wedges in nearly $50 billion for immigration crackdowns and border infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the cost is brutal. The bill would impose harsh new work requirements for Medicaid and SNAP recipients, cut federal matching funds to states, and likely cause between 8 and 11 million people to lose health coverage.
And here’s the kicker: Americans hate this bill. Polling shows that most voters still don’t know what’s in the legislation, but when they do, they overwhelmingly oppose it. Cuts to Medicaid? Billionaire tax breaks? Clean energy rollbacks? All deeply unpopular. It’s the same dynamic we’ve seen with private school vouchers in Texas: the more people learn, the worse it polls.
What’s in the ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’
- Cuts nearly a trillion dollars from Medicaid, the largest cut ever to this vital, life-saving program
- Kicks 11.8 million people off Medicaid health coverage
- Adds $4.1 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years
- Increases the budget of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to a size larger than most militaries around the world
- Eliminates funding for green energy
- Strips health care from 17 million Americans
- Kicks millions of people off SNAP benefits
- Represents the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in U.S. history